


The Best Laid Plans (Go Awry)

by VIII_XIII



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 23:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15673338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VIII_XIII/pseuds/VIII_XIII
Summary: “Cobb is straight, isn’t he?”Arthur snapped his pencil, the sound particularly loud in the quiet of Cobb’s somewhat ostentatious rental BMW that Eames did not personally think was ideal for surveillance. “What?” he asked far too quickly and irritably as he dug in the side pocket of the bag on the floor under his legs for his little manual pencil sharpener. Eames wasn’t sure when Arthur had started using pencils instead of his overpriced refillable ink pens, but he wasn’t going to ask because he suspected that it might be considered creepy that he’d noticed.“Dominic Cobb is straight. Right?” Eames repeated. Arthur, pencil sharpener in hand, just stared at him, stone-faced, for a moment that stretched on so long that Eames actually began to feel uncomfortable.“Gross. That’s not funny. It’s really gross,” Arthur said at last.





	The Best Laid Plans (Go Awry)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oceaxe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Best Laid Plans](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13534431) by [oceaxe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/pseuds/oceaxe). 



> Eames's point of view.

There was nothing subconscious about the way that Eames pulled Arthur’s pigtails, and there never had been in all the years he’d been doing it. Eames was a remarkably self-aware person—his therapists had always told him so, generally before reminding him that self-awareness was not a virtue unless you used it to better yourself, which Eames generally actively avoided doing due to a laundry list of personality quirks and defects that he was, of course, perfectly well aware of.

But that was another very long story; the point in this case was that his attraction to Arthur had never been anything close to subconscious, and neither had any of his behaviors around him, and that was why at this point he was a bit sick of it, really. Circumstances had long conspired to keep Eames from seriously pursuing Arthur, with “circumstances” primarily being Dominic Cobb. Eames had been very fond of Mal, and Mal had been exceedingly fond of Arthur, and when she was alive Eames had thought it fairly likely that in good time he could ever-so-gently pry Arthur away from Mal’s elegant, vaguely maternal grasp. She’d teased him about it, though he’d never actually said anything about it to her. She’d been intuitive that way.

And then she was gone and there was just Dom, and unfortunately for the most part there was just Dom-and-Arthur. Arthur had entered a brief and extreme grief spiral and emerged more or less Dom’s errand boy (“Don’t call me that.” “His familiar, then.” “Go fuck yourself.”). Arthur was not available for work or anything else—not without Cobb, and frankly Eames found Dom without the mitigating influences of Mal to be an utterly exhausting human being and an absolutely enormous cockblock. In the two years after Mal’s death he kept Arthur wound so tight that even when Eames decided that he had the mental energy to deal with a job with Dom and finally managed to coax or goad Arthur into going out socially, Arthur would sit at whatever bar Eames chose slowly working his way through a single beer and compulsively bouncing his right leg while complaining about work (“It’s not complaining, it’s just discussion.”).

And silly Eames for ever thinking that when Cobb said retire, he actually meant retire; his definition of “retirement” meant taking only low-risk jobs in North America, and of course sensible, practical Arthur loved low-risk jobs in North America, and Eames was going absolutely mad. Cobb was so obnoxiously good at his job and Arthur was so bafflingly immune to his many personal shortcomings that Eames was going to have to simply make Arthur see the things that he could offer that Cobb could not, or at least should not—definitely not, ever, not that Arthur would be into it even if he offered, because Arthur had taste and he would never, right? Right. Definitely right.

Never.

“Cobb is straight, isn’t he?”

Arthur snapped his pencil, the sound particularly loud in the quiet of Cobb’s somewhat ostentatious rental BMW that Eames did not personally think was ideal for surveillance. “What?” he asked far too quickly and irritably as he dug in the side pocket of the bag on the floor under his legs for his little manual pencil sharpener. Eames wasn’t sure when Arthur had started using pencils instead of his overpriced refillable ink pens, but he wasn’t going to ask because he suspected that it might be considered creepy that he’d noticed.

“Dominic Cobb is straight. Right?” Eames repeated. Arthur, pencil sharpener in hand, just stared at him, stone-faced, for a moment that stretched on so long that Eames actually began to feel uncomfortable.

“Gross. That’s not funny. It’s really gross,” Arthur said at last.

Well, that was a positive reaction, from Eames’s perspective at least. “It is?” Eames thought he sounded rather delighted, but Arthur didn’t seem to notice. He was frowning at his pencil as he sharpened it rather violently.

“He’s not your type,” Arthur said seriously. “He’s nobody’s type. Yours least of all.”

“And how do you know what my type is, Arthur?”

“I know it’s not Dom, so stop being gross. And yes, he’s straight. He’s the straightest person I know. He owns a pair of Crocs, for fuck’s sake.”

“ _What_?”

Arthur actually snorted a little; he wasn’t looking up, having buried his face back in his Moleskine, but Eames caught the barest hint of one of his dimples as he tried not to laugh. “He thinks they’re acceptable if he only wears them at home.”

“Dear god,” Eames breathed, and Arthur did laugh then, unable to help himself. Eames could count the number of times he’d seen Arthur laugh on one hand, and it was beautiful, and it did things to Eames that would have been worrying had he not already come to terms with the fact that he was well past simply wanting to get into Arthur’s trousers.

He actually had to look away entirely, or he’d definitely be caught just staring. “Well, now, Arthur,” he said, reaching into his own bag and digging around a bit for a small pouch he knew must have been in there somewhere. “Just for the sake of conversation, let’s hear what you think my _type_ is, now that we know you’ve thought about it.”

“I never said I’d thought about it,” Arthur replied, with what remained of his smile as the laughter subsided vanishing all at once.

“But you must have, or how would you know it’s not Cobb?” Eames argued. He found the pouch stuck in one of the interior pockets and sat back with it cradled in both hands, looking over at Arthur once more and cocking his head.

Arthur sighed, his fingers stilling as he paused in whatever he was jotting down in his only partially legible but consistent and attractive scrawl. He clicked his teeth and turned to look at Eames with his eyes narrowed. “Blond,” he said.

“Mm, no, not generally.”

“And a flake. Someone who thinks all of your ideas are good ones and that you’re some kind of fucking genius.”

Eames would never admit it, but he actually couldn’t tell whether or not Arthur was entirely serious, or even partially serious. “Oh, Arthur, really? No.”

Arthur’s gaze flickered over Eames’s person and his brow furrowed a little. “And a twink,” he decided at last.

One of Eames’s eyebrows crept up. He stared very pointedly at Arthur. “Well.” He wondered if his answer to this could have unpleasant repercussions later. “I mean, perhaps a _former_ twink who’s got some more life experience now, since I’m looking for someone more mature, with a bit more stability than a proper twink would have to offer…”

The look that Arthur was giving him was so unreadable but vaguely threatening that Eames turned his attention to the pouch in his hands, unzipping it to reveal several lockpicking tools. The lock on Dom’s glovebox didn’t require anything special, but he did need some sort of metal implement for it. He heard Arthur take a slow breath before he unexpectedly asked, “Are you _seriously_ looking for someone mature and stable?”

Eames glanced over. “I _am_ in my mid-thirties now.”

“But _looking_? What would you _do_ with someone mature and stable?”

Eames fiddled with one of the hooks from his kit, flipping it through his fingers, and frowned at Arthur. “Well, I like to travel, I would enjoy having someone to cook for, and ideally I’m looking for someone with an active lifestyle because I rather need a positive influence in that arena at this juncture in my life. I like bad television and worse films, I am an enthusiastic switch, and to be very perfectly honest I’m a bit of a romantic. Like to receive flowers from time to time, that sort of thing.”

Arthur was looking at him like they’d never met before and Eames had just come up and introduced himself as the fifth in line to the throne of Sweden—partially disbelieving but also cautiously interested despite himself. The silence stretched on so long that Eames smiled in a way that he hoped wasn’t as awkward on the outside as it felt on the inside, then abruptly turned his attention back to the glovebox. “I guess I never thought of you as the relationship type,” Arthur said, surprisingly quiet and sounding almost chastened as Eames pulled back the latch and inserted the hook.

The lock popped easily, just as Arthur said, “I’m sorry,” the first apology he’d ever willingly given Eames. Eames looked up in surprise as Arthur’s eyes fixed on the contents of the glove box, and Eames’s expression went a little soppy as Arthur’s turned to a frown, and just as Eames was about to say _thank you, Arthur_ , Arthur said, “What is _that_?”

Eames looked back down at the glove box. _That_ was a box of condoms, a bottle of lube, and a metric fifth of Jack Daniels nestled on top of the car’s owner’s manual and rental agreement. “Oh my god,” Arthur said, horrified.

“I have to admit that I would have thought Cobb had a more sophisticated taste in spirits,” Eames said blandly, but Arthur reached over and slammed the glovebox shut.

“That’s disgusting.”

“I feel I should point out that I also own condoms and lube.”

“But you don’t have them in your _glovebox_ , in a _rental car_ , on a _job_ ,” Arthur snapped, jabbing a finger at the glovebox accusingly, as though it had some culpability for its own contents. “A car that you then _loaned out_ to a thief with all the self-control of a _toddler_ —”

“Hey now—”

“—without bothering to fucking clear out the glovebox first! Gross. He’s gross.”

While his reaction wasn’t anywhere near as visceral, Eames had to admit that it was a bit off-putting. Quite off-putting, really, when he thought about it a bit—and he did only think about it a bit, because it was not the sort of thing he generally preferred to think about after all. “I mean, yes, I suppose.”

“It’s unprofessional,” Arthur muttered, sitting there now with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring out the windshield. When Eames didn’t respond right away, Arthur’s gaze darted over, his eyes narrowed, and he added, “You disagree? Is that the kind of shit you do after hours on jobs?”

“Certainly not on jobs with you, Arthur,” Eames replied, and he thought that sounded rather flirtatious in addition to being true, and he wanted it to be, because he wanted to get back to whatever that tentative, strange and new place was that they’d been just before he made the mistake of breaking into Cobb’s glovebox. It didn’t seem to work, as Arthur just rolled his eyes. Eames added, “Or with anyone else, normally. I like to get a solid eight hours, and it’s a bit of a security risk, innit?”

“Yes!” Arthur exclaimed. “Ugh. That’s probably why he has that shit in his car; he thinks it’s not a risk if he doesn’t bring people back to his room. What kind of grown man has sex in a car?”

Eames trained his eyes for a moment on the pristine tan headliner of the rental and didn’t say anything at all. Arthur was massaging the bridge of his nose with both hand when he risked looking back at him; after a moment he muttered, “He’s treating jobs like _vacation time_ away from his kids. God, he’s such an asshole. A gross asshole.”

And suddenly there it was. An opening—a chance for Eames to point out that maybe taking jobs with Cobb wasn’t Arthur’s best option anymore. A chance to remind Arthur that he _had_ other options, including one rather enthusiastic option that had remained patiently open for some time now. He coughed a little, clearing his throat. “In that case—”

“There she is.” Eames blinked at the interruption. For a minute there, he’d nearly forgotten that there was a _she_ they were supposed to be staking out, but indeed there was the mark’s mistress with a sleek black French bulldog cradled in one arm, smiling at the doorman of her hotel as she headed for the taxi stand, and Arthur was already starting the engine. The moment, whatever moment it had been, was gone.

Arthur mostly stopped sniping at Eames after that. There was the odd jab back and forth between them, mostly out of habit, but Arthur’s annoyance seemed to have been almost entirely redirected at Cobb, who in turn seemed baffled but was shut down with pointed, even irritated work talk every time he tried to make nice with Arthur. Eames actually found the whole experience rather therapeutic.

“Arthur, do you have the blueprints of the mark’s house?” Cobb asked with two days to go.

“In that pile,” Arthur said, jabbing his pencil in the direction of a stack of papers on a nearby table that mostly consisted of things Arthur did not consider to be vital to him anymore, organized in some way that only Arthur understood. Arthur, however, did not even look up from his computer screen, much less move from his position with his feet kicked up on his desk, and he certainly did not bother to mention that he had a digital copy handy right on his desktop and had forwarded it to Eames without complaint the prior evening.

Eames watched Cobb go through the pile with an ever-deepening frown. Shortly thereafter, Arthur came over to Eames’s desk just before he left to do some last-minute recon. Eames had a moment where he hoped Arthur would ask him to come along, though he knew that he had his own work to finish, but instead Arthur did something just as surprising—he set his notebook on Eames’s desk.

“Why don’t you take a look through my notes and make sure everything lines up with yours, if you get the chance?” Arthur asked, as though he had _ever_ willingly let Eames look in his notebook in all the years they’d known one another. As though he hadn’t just smacked Eames on the hand as though he were an errant child for trying to copy down the mark’s eldest son’s phone number out of it _on this very job_.

“Yeah,” Eames said, his voice coming out disappointingly dry and weak. It was Arthur’s fault for staring—he wasn’t used to the sustained eye contact. He glanced over at Cobb, who wasn’t even pretending not to gape. “Uh. No problem.”

And the silly thing was, he was confident that they were fully prepared, but he did look through the notebook. It was all work-related, disappointingly devoid of personal thoughts or little doodles, and of course Arthur only reused any given notebook when he was working with the same team as the previous jobs contained therein, so even if Eames flipped through the older pages he’d just find a bunch of things he already knew about the last job the three of them had done together, and then the one before that, and then the Fischer job before that. Holding the notebook without having had to steal it, though, still felt strange and wonderful, and Eames actually enjoyed going through and cross-referencing every bit of information, doing one last check for flaws he was sure weren’t there.

He assumed that Arthur would come by his desk to retrieve it the following day, and so he rather forgot that it was there, tucked safely into a side pocket of his bag. Arthur didn’t ask for it. The day after that was the job, and Eames did remember the notebook—oddly enough while he was pretending to be an ER surgeon and was wrist-deep in the mark’s son’s abdominal cavity acting as though he knew what all of these organs were. It occurred to him that Arthur was so bloody brilliant and so meticulous that the organs were probably all real, actual human organs placed lovingly in their appropriate places in the body.

Eames was saying to the nurse, “Two D6 radiant damage to the kidney,” as he poked at what he suspected might actually be a spleen, and the nurse managed to convey a very Arthurian look of annoyance even through his mask. Eames had never been able to prove that Arthur had a secret history as a tabletop roleplayer, but he absolutely refused to believe that he didn’t, with his nerdy knowledge base and love of rules and habit of writing everything down.

_Ah, I still have the notebook_ , Eames thought.

It was a long way out of the high rise the mark worked in after the extraction was finished, so they had to hurry. Of course Eames didn’t have the notebook _on_ him—he wasn’t stupid enough to bring his work bag on an extraction—but it did occur to him to offer to give it back when they went to clear their hotel out. Except that right when he went to say it, Cobb said to Arthur, “See you soon.”

“No, you won’t,” Arthur said as he breezed out the door with his briefcase, leaving Cobb to stare after at him with the PASIV half packed up, and Eames’s jaw dropped open. He practically ran after Arthur, just catching him in the elevator.

“I’ll see you back at the hotel, yeah?” he asked on the way down, while Arthur was glancing at his watch.

“No, I sent my bags ahead this morning,” Arthur replied. “I have a flight to catch in two hours.”

Eames frowned. He didn’t mention the notebook, as there was nothing to be done for it then, and it would only annoy Arthur at what was clearly already a stressful time. Arthur didn’t look at him when they left the building; he just wordlessly turned to head for the subway while Eames stared after him. After a moment, Eames went to the taxi stand, pretending not to be disappointed.

He was in line at the baggage drop at the airport four hours later when a text came from an unknown number. _I want my notebook back_ , it read. The next message, immediately following, contained an address. Eames blinked at it, feeling various bits of his insides do a strange little flip. The logical conclusion might have been that Arthur wanted Eames to send the notebook to him, but somehow Eames felt—or maybe hoped—that that was not the case. Surely Arthur wouldn’t want something so valuable and with such sensitive information in it to be entrusted to international post.

Surely Arthur had forgotten the notebook on purpose.

Doing an odd sort of dance in which he tried to decide whether to get out of line or not and the woman behind him frowned at him for nearly hitting her with his laptop bag—which wasn’t his fault really, as it wasn’t as though standing so close would have gotten her to the front any faster—Eames finally grabbed his suitcase and headed for the international terminal while he pulled up flight times.

It was raining in Kyoto, because it was mid-June and of course it was. Eames bought a four hundred yen umbrella at the station and then found a taxi, having a brief struggle with the door before remembering it was automatic, much to the quiet annoyance of the driver. The address wasn’t far; behind an upscale shopping strip was a quiet residential neighborhood, and behind the main road through the neighborhood was a narrow side street, and behind a modern house with cream-colored paint was an older but extremely well-maintained _machiya_ down a narrow alley with a weathered wooden gate that had been left just slightly propped open.

Arthur answered the door as though he’d been expecting Eames, and maybe he had. He probably had, because sometimes Eames was just that predictable. He pointed outside to a little stand under the eaves and said, “Umbrella,” and then inside to a little alcove and said, “Shoes.” The house was too immaculate inside to be anything but a rental, but even though Arthur couldn’t have been there for more than six hours yet, there were plenty of groceries visible in the kitchen—though on a second glance, they seemed to be mostly snacks from a 7-Eleven.

“I’ve got your notebook,” Eames said, retrieving it from his bag before setting the bag on top of his suitcase.

“Just put it wherever,” Arthur said, waving his hand dismissively as he headed for the kitchen. “You want a beer, right?”

There was a dining table next to the kitchen, but in the other direction behind some open screens there was a lounge with a low table that had a ceramic vase of fresh flowers in various purples and white on it, and Eames chose to sit on the floor there instead. A minute later, Arthur set a can of Asahi next to him on the table along with a bag of crackers wrapped in seaweed, then sat himself down adjacent. He stared at the flowers for a moment, seemingly unsure of what to say, so Eames stepped in. “Leave it to you to choose Japan in the rainy season over a tropical island somewhere for a holiday.”

Arthur’s gaze shifted to him. “Well, I don’t really want to know if you’re interested in drinking daiquiris on the beach and watching twinks sunbathe, Eames. I want to know if you’re interested in going out on long walks in the rain and seeing Buddhist art.” He paused for a moment, and then added rather seriously, “With me.”

Eames raised both eyebrows. “I’m particularly partial to Amida landscape paintings, as I find them to be oddly reassuring, but I have a healthy appreciation for all sorts. And for art in general.” And he added, just as seriously, “And for you.”

Even though Arthur had clearly done all this deliberately, that somehow managed to fluster him, and his eyes went back to the flowers, and then to Eames again, and then the flowers. And then he suddenly grabbed the vase, awkwardly, and held it out in the short distance between them, and said, “I got you flowers.”

It did not appear that Arthur was very experienced at giving flowers, or very comfortable with it, but he’d done it anyway. Eames’s heart was pounding as he took them and said, “They’re lovely, Arthur. Thank you.” He set them a bit comically, but not unkindly, back on the table more or less where they’d just been. “Have I ever mentioned how much I admire your maturity and stability?” Eames asked, and he was impressed at how casual he managed to make it sound, but he was not as impressed with the undignified sound he let out when Arthur leaned across the table and grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him into a kiss that was hard, and a bit rough at first, and then not rough at all but deep and exploratory and a little demanding.

Eames had not experienced a lot of things in his life that he would describe as catharsis; he tended to take frustrations and trauma and bury them deep. But _this_ was catharsis, a release after years of wanting and denying and wanting some more and not being able to deny it. Arthur crawled around the corner of the table, barely breaking the kiss, and Eames wasn’t sure whether he pulled Arthur down with him or Arthur was the one pushing him onto his back, but it happened regardless that Arthur climbed on top of him, settling his full and surprisingly substantial weight onto Eames in a way that Eames was absolutely, definitely very into.

While Eames had done this sort of thing on his fair share of surfaces, tatami was a new one and not altogether that bad—especially when Arthur took a break after roughly yanking open his trousers to pull over one of the cushions and slide it under Eames’s head, and that was perhaps the most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for Eames in such a situation.

“Listen, darling,” he said, rather breathless as Arthur’s hand found his erection and his lips and then his teeth found the sensitive skin just under the hinge of his jaw. Arthur hummed questioningly, and Eames took a deep, shuddering breath and focused on a joint in the structural beams above the doorway and willed himself to say, “I’ve just been thinking—for the past five years or so—that you and I work rather brilliantly together, and we should be partners.”

Arthur lifted his head, his lips a little swollen and slick with spit in a way that drove Eames nearly as mad as the way his hand mostly stilled save for his thumb rubbing back and forth over the tip of his cock. “We argue all the time,” he countered.

“I’ve always preferred an argument with you to a friendly chat with anyone else.”

“You think I’m a stick in the mud.”

“Ah, he told you that?” Eames asked, and Arthur gave him a sharp little squeeze that he nearly managed to make threatening even as Eames trembled a little with want. He drew a shuddering breath, managed to grin a little. “Didn’t you ever badmouth something you wanted and couldn’t have?”

Arthur kissed him again, filthy and open-mouthed, and Eames groaned into it. “So you want to work together,” Arthur murmured a minute later, mouthing at Eames’s lower lip and jaw as he did. “Is that it?”

“I want us to do everything together.” Eames hadn’t meant to put it like that, so bluntly. But it came tumbling out before he could stop it, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret it as Arthur stilled, and he turned his head just slightly to catch his eye. They were so very close, it was hard to even focus. Seconds ticked by, and Eames swallowed heavily, and he added, “I’m tired of only seeing your lovely face on other people’s jobs, Arthur.”

He was more or less dragged up the narrow staircase at the rear of the house to the bedroom, and the experience of being shoved onto a futon was quite different than that of being shoved onto a mattress, and Arthur laughed— _laughed_ , with _dimples_ —as he practically fell on top of Eames. It was perhaps the least graceful thing he’d ever done in Eames’s line of sight.

“You must be jet lagged,” Arthur said as he stripped off his own shirt and started on his trousers. It would have been more efficient to get naked before lying down, but he seemed to want to be close, and Eames couldn’t fault him for that.

He _was_ jet lagged, though, and suddenly being in bed was reminding him of that. “Are you trying to get out of this?” Fuck, Arthur was stunning. He stripped off the last of his clothing, and Eames was just… lost. But then Arthur rolled off of him, onto his stomach but pressed up close to Eames’s side on the narrow futon, and he gave him a dry, amused look. “I was gonna ask if you want to just come between my thighs and we’ll try something more complicated after you take a nap.”

“You’re beautiful, Arthur. Perfect. Has anyone ever told you that?”

Arthur scrubbed at his face with one hand. “Christ,” he muttered, and maybe he was hiding embarrassment or maybe he was hiding a laugh—probably both. “There’s stuff in that bag.”

He gestured to a little toiletries bag lying a couple of feet away, and Eames rolled onto his side with some difficulty. He dragged the bag over and peered inside to find an unopened box of condoms and a sealed bottle of lube that both looked extremely familiar. Eames stared at them for a moment before picking up the box. “Arthur, are these…?”

“He fucking owes me after all the shit I’ve been through, and you’re not the only one who knows how to break into a glovebox.”

It took a few years, but they did invite Dom to the wedding.


End file.
